yes because we've made them so expensive that only the upper middle class can afford to go thanks Brookings
To succeed in college requires 12 years of training in a good elementary school up through high school. A good education leaves you with the ability to read, write, form an opinion, present that opinion as an argument, seek new info and test the validity of new data. A good education up to high school also teaches good study skills, discipline, setting goals, and performing tasks in order. If you go to a shit school district, odds are that you are not going to get this root set of skills. Even if you make it to a college, you will fall behind the other kids that did go to good schools. This is why there are remedial math, English, reading and writing classes for kids that need to get caught up. I will leave it to the reader to make guesses on the socioeconomic status of the kids in good schools versus poor schools.
Math shows it's still a very solid investment to go to college. Education Level - Median Weekly Income High School/No College - 668 High School/Some College - 761 Bachelor's - 1101 Master's - 1386 So if you did rack up 100k in student debt to get a bachelor's degree, it would help you make (1101-668)=$433 more dollars per week over someone who went to high school only. $100,000/$433= approx 231 weeks of extra income's worth of loans. That's only 4.5 years, then for the rest of your life you're just making more than your investment. Of course, you don't make the difference right away as it's the median income level for someone with that has that degree level, and I understand that it's part of the article to say that there's a wealth buffer, but even if you triple the repayment of the investment, it's still worth (in a 40 year career) ~800k in additional money. So you put in 100k, you get 800k. Anyone should make that investment. Really, it's a wonder that college was every as cheap as it was to begin with. It's a huge return on investment, not only in percent, but in nominal dollars as well. Of course when you give people nearly unlimited access to capital, and shield lenders from any fear of losses through aggressive lending, you're going to spiral up the money supply in that market and get cost to the new maximum level that the market will bear. So now here we are. As well, colleges have waaaaaay too many extravagant things to solely judge their costs on a repayment in education. There's probably a new market soon to emerge that would aim to be a bare bones educational experience. Go to class, no cafeteria, no sports, no av club etc.
Those earnings reflect productivity, which reflects GDP, which reflects tax income and power. This is the way they explained trade school scholarships in auto shop in 11th grade: Of course they'll lend/give you the money to go to college because they get more taxes out of you in the long run and the government can afford to wait. College as it exists today is extravagant because they're competing for loan dollars, seminar dollars and foreign dollars (foreign students pay sticker price while less than 30% of US students pay full sticker price, according to the Chronicle of Higher Ed). My wife's alma mater spent a shit-ton on new dorms, despite the fact that nobody lives in the dorms. It didn't make any sense until they started hosting conferences all summer. But then, that's part of the problem: the economics of college are being masked from the economics of working-class people, particularly when the for-profit diploma mills are so aggressively disparaging of a traditional education.Really, it's a wonder that college was every as cheap as it was to begin with.
Honestly, I don't think the college model is going to work much longer. And they've (and I've) been saying this for years. College is mostly a waste of time. You go to learn one skill set, then you have to learn a hugely diverse skill set to become a 'well-rounded' individual. I get that, I hold two Master's, and around 300 credit hours in a classroom, with many of those hours going to nothing productive in particular. I'm round. But having done all that, which was an insane luxury for most, I don't recommend it. I took really hard (for me) math classes that expanded my mind a bit, but I also had to start from trig because math has never been my strong suit. So a lot of classes it took to get to Abstract Mathematics and Non-Linear Algebra before math really started blowing my mind. But what do I use in my job? Mostly overall concepts of marketing segmentation, media channels, and experience from other jobs I've had. And a fine ability to bullshit. That's like 4 of the classes I took in college ever, a lifetime of not liking extra work, and luck. So when I say that college is on its way out, I think what's going to take its place is certification. That cert used to be a degree, but lots of jobs in IT especially don't respect your degree. They want you to see you code (I've heard, I'm not a programmer). They want to see your Cisco certification, not your diploma. So why is Marketing different? Because it didn't spring up quickly, and employ a group of fast moving people who walked into a job of unlimited growth, and who now run their companies' IT departments without a degree, thus spurring on a disregard for people with degrees but little practical experience. I dont' work in IT, but I do know a ton of people who work in IT, especially tech support for big companies, whose major skill is being able to look up the solution to a problem in forums and on google. As soon as people can get hired with certs for marketing functions, people aren't going to go to school for Marketing anymore. Same with most jobs. I didn't go to school for education, I did it to waste time while I adjusted to being out of the military. Along the way I found something I liked doing, but that is a super inefficient college journey.
"I'm going to get an Engineering degree because the one thing I know is I can't rely on anyone ever providing for me. So while I appreciate your scholarship offer, I'm going to have to decline." - me to the recruiter Ripon flew out to meet me This book is relevant to your interests. Selingo largely agrees with everything you say.